Miami Beach gives initial approval for major music festival starting in 2024
A music festival that has previously featured A-list headliners like Adele, Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder could be coming to Miami Beach starting in 2024.
City commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday for Miami Beach to sponsor a festival run by the organizers of the North Sea Jazz Festival, which is typically held in the Netherlands and Curacao.
The three-day event, which is being rebranded as the Miami Beach Music Festival, would debut in March 2024 in Lummus Park, east of Ocean Drive. It represents part of the city’s effort to create new programming to prevent the large and sometimes unruly crowds that typically gather during spring break.
The 2019 North Sea Jazz Festival in Curacao featured Lauryn Hill and Janelle Monae. The 2022 festival lineup in the Netherlands was headlined by Keys and Erykah Badu.
Mayor Dan Gelber raised questions Wednesday about whether the proposed festival would achieve that goal if it doesn’t shut down Ocean Drive.
“I sort of want Ocean Drive to be cordoned off,” Gelber said. “Maybe we can program Ocean Drive through the festival.”
Miami Beach initially sought to host the North Sea festival in 2021, but the COVID pandemic foiled those plans.
Now, the city commission is agreeing to sponsor the festival for five years with an option for an additional five years, provided that the organizers hit certain benchmarks regarding ticket sales and economic impact.
The measure approved Wednesday includes a waiver of rental fees for the organizers and the city covering the costs of police and other city services outside the event. The organizers would cover about $12 million for talent and other event costs.
City officials still need to negotiate a contract with the festival organizers, which will return to the commission for approval.
Other questions remain before the festival can become a reality, including the dates it would take place. The city initially recommended holding it during the second weekend in March, but officials said Wednesday that it may need to take place the first weekend of the month instead to give a major motorsport event, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, enough time to set up for its own event the third weekend in March.
Those details are expected to be discussed at a Dec. 14 commission meeting.
Commissioner Ricky Arriola added that he wants assurances that the festival will be viable for years, and that the city will have some recourse if it fails. He pointed to the Miami Beach Pop Festival, which was canceled a month before it was scheduled to occur in South Beach in 2019.
“This commission has been bamboozled in the past,” Arriola said.
The North Sea festival is produced by Gregory Elias, who helped establish an entertainment management degree program at the University of Central Florida. David Wallack, the owner of Mango’s Tropical Cafe on Ocean Drive, is also a partner in seeking to bring the festival to Miami Beach.
City officials are currently planning spring break programming for 2023. Last month, they unveiled a $3.2 million plan to bring a variety of sports and fitness programming to South Beach next March, calling it “fitness month.”
It will be the second iteration of “Miami Beach Live!” — the city’s effort “to change the narrative of spring break and create a platform for expansion in future years,” according to a memo from City Manager Alina Hudak.
This past March, the programming centered on a series of weekend concerts in Lummus Park and on the beach at Ocean Drive. The shows were tailored to an over-40 audience — Alanis Morisette was a headliner — rather than the young, majority-Black crowds that typically visit South Beach during spring break.
Two shooting incidents on Ocean Drive injured five people and led the city to declare a state of emergency and impose a midnight curfew.
This story was originally published November 16, 2022 at 2:57 PM.
